


Crimson Ribbons

by SaintDeanThomas



Series: The Road To Legacy [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, F/M, Gen, I will give her the justice she deserves so help me god or die trying, after canon, cartoon violence, phantom planet will be explained away later the cut off point in canon is d-stabilized, revelation fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-11-21 23:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11368041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintDeanThomas/pseuds/SaintDeanThomas
Summary: Valerie Gray is owed a debt and some answers, the question now is: what is she willing to go through just to get her foot in the water and more importantly, how hard does she need to fight if she wants the pieces of her life to fall into place again.





	1. Absence

Casper High was like a prison to Valerie, and considering her night job was to bag and tag all sorts of supernatural criminals, the irony was not lost on her. Of course, back when she was one of the a-listers, life was much simpler; no double shifts at the Nasty Burger, no bagged lunches on the football field with the other losers and most importantly… no ghost hunting.

It was bad enough when she was just using the equipment that Vlad Masters had given her, at least then she had some illusion of normality- she was a teenage girl working a high stress job that had to be done- but now, ever since her encounter with Technus and Phantom, even that shred of humanity had managed to slip through her fingers. 

“No better than a ghost,” she muttered, angrily biting into her sandwich, “worse even, I’m some kind of… robot freak.”

She still wasn’t even sure how most of her equipment worked anymore. Whenever she wanted it to appear she just had to concentrate and it would instantly be on her, and when she was done with it, it would fade away just as quickly as it showed up. As far as she could tell it was just… inside her somewhere, floating around in bits and pieces until she gave the order for them to assemble. It had gotten to the point where her dad, bless his heart, now had the go-to statement “it’s just nanobots, sweetie,” ready for her whenever she brought up her concerns about the suit’s ghostly nature, and while that did give her a little comfort, Valerie couldn’t shake the feeling that she was closer to supernatural than science fiction at this point.

Flexing her free hand, she watched as the sleeve of her suit began to form over her bare skin, the red and black material weightless against her palm but durable enough tank a hit point-blank without her feeling a thing. Transfixed, Valerie was caught off guard by the sound of laughter coming from behind the bleachers, a familiar sound from her heyday that now filled her with dread whenever she heard it; Paulina.

“Oh my gosh, Valerie!?” she yelled, glancing to where Valerie was sitting and drawing the other’s attention towards her. “It’s been forever, I thought for sure you had transferred!”

Rolling her eyes, Val faked a smile and addressed her old clique, mentally going over them one by one. Paulina was at the top naturally, a beautiful rich girl who was so perfect you’d have though she bled diamonds from her… if you ignored the bottle-cap shallow act she put on in public (and unfortunately, most people did). Then there was Star- the “satellite” as she was known in the lower circles- a certified genius disguised as the socialite circle’s second in command, too scared of being alone to be break off from planet Paulina’s popularity orbit for too long without attaching to someone else’s. 

Lastly, there was Kwan and Dash, two halves of a whole idiot as far as she was concerned. Kwan was a nice enough guy by himself, he liked cats and was pretty gentle despite his status as the school’s senior locker stuffer but with Dash, it was almost like he was afraid of his own feelings. He liked cheesy telenovellas, collected stuffed animals, and loved ballet and musicals more than he would ever admit, but he never let himself enjoy those moments for more than a few minutes before he’d get paranoid or angry and storm out. Frankly, Valerie thought the four of them together were walking disasters.

“Heyyy girl,” Valerie replied her fake smile now slightly predatory, “it has been awhile!” because you jerks pushed me out and you’re only talking to me now because no one’s around. “I’m still here y’know, just been workin hard tryin to earn a livin, you guys know how it is.”

Watching as they shuffled unsurely at her last statement, Val couldn’t deny that she got a sense of cruel satisfaction at their discomfort from interacting with her, almost like the parts of them that used to be her friends were struggling with their desire for high school superiority. Unfortunately, just like last time, the latter wants won over, with Paulina tossing her hair back and beginning to walk off with a half-hearted goodbye.

“Well,” Paulina said, sliding on her sunglasses to avoid eye contact with Valerie, “maybe we’ll see you around, I mean, I hear thrift shopping is becoming all the rage lately so we might even run into each other a lot more? Hasta luego, chica!”  
As Valerie reeled from the indirect jab and the a-listers began to shuffle off, she caught an apologetic look from Star, a unspoken 'I’m sorry' for Paulina’s unnecessary rudeness and her own aloofness over the past few months. Waving her off with a bitter, silent 'I’m used to it,' Val went back to her meager lunch, temporarily distracted from her ghost issues as she dealt with the normality of the high school experience. 

“The more things change,” she said, still scowling at the football field as the sky began to darken and the bell rang, “the more everything still sucks.”

\----

Back in class, things weren’t much better for Valerie either, as Lancer handed her a folded piece of paper signifying that she had once again failed his latest quiz.

"Ms. Gray,” he said, calling unnecessary attention to her, “congratulations, it seems that you’ll now be joining Mr. Foley, Mr. Fenton and myself after school for detention.”

“What? But i-“

“No buts, you know the rules, three failed tests equals an automatic detention. I'd say study harder next time, but that would imply you've been studying at all recently."

Slamming her head against the desk, Valerie muffled a string of vague curses and threats that went unheard as Lancer began his county mandated hour long lesson on the brilliance of H.G Wells and the power of fear. Rising from her defeat with a slow eye-roll, Val turned and looked at an empty desk in the beside the window while something clicked in her head; Danny's not here today.

"-and with the panic caused by the Welles' ''War of the Worlds' broadcast reaching an all time high, the public was relieved to hear it was just a practical joke, but by then the damage had been done. Ms. Gray," Lancer called, staring at her with an accusatory glare, "perhaps you can tell me why the people were in such a panic? I'll even knock off that detention for good behavior."

Not melting beneath his gaze, Valerie glared back at him with twice the intensity, he'd just handed her a loaded gun and unfortunately for him, she was a great shot. "The panic was that people never want a fight they can't win," she said, refusing to blink as she went on, "they knew that if something was coming from another world for them, they couldn't stop them and that they would lose everything. People are selfish like that, they'll take all they can get and never give anything away... but losing? Having something ripped out from under you and not knowing how to fight the thing taking it away. that's a reason to panic, that's fear at it's most simple; thinking a monster is at your doorstep but knowing- not thinking, knowing- you can't stop him from taking everything you've got... sir." 

She spit the last word at him with such intensity he visibly went pale in front of the now silent class. Valerie had no idea how long he would've been frozen in silence if Dash hadn't broken the silence with his laughter. He probably didn't even know what he found funny other that the stunned look on Lancer's face, but as soon as he began the rest of the class followed short.

"Congratulations," Lancer announced, respectfully nodding at her before wheeling on Dash with a look of annoyance, "it looks like Mr. Baxter has just volunteered to fill the vacancy left by Ms. Gray, how fortunate."

The rest of the period was uneventful as ever once Lancer decided it was in his pride's best interest to leave Valerie -who didn't even attempt to pretend to pay attention- alone and focus on the lesson at hand, alternating between the board and answering Kwan's questions about the time traveling to win the lottery. In fact things had slowed down so much, it gave Valerie ample time to think while the inane chatter of high school English droned on in the background. 

Unfortunately, thinking was the last thing she wanted to do at at the moment; all at once her mind began to swim with thoughts of being puppeteered by her own living suit, being hunted through the woods by ethereal dogs and birds, and chasing two identical figures through the basement of Axion labs only to end up hovering over an abyss where the ground had suddenly ended. That last thought was always what brought her back to reality, because in her mind the figure had one of two faces she could recall, Vlad Plasmius or Danny Phantom.  
The former had become the more rage inducing lately, especially since she'd discovered that it was the alter ego of her former benefactor Vlad Masters a few months prior. Of course, she hadn't intended to take that bit of information lying down at first, but after a lot of planning and plotting, Valerie realized that -much to her fury- there wasn't really a lot she could do with it. Go to the press? Ha! A poor girl going up against a rich man had never gone over well before and she could bet this time wouldn't be much different. Confront him? That was the more dangerous play. Even if she did manage to get a confession out of him, she knew that she could be seen as an accessory to all sorts of illegal things he may have done while she was his apprentice. Not only that, but Valerie had to consider her dad in all of it too; he was already struggling to make ends meet as it was, the last thing he needed was to lose his job because Vladco was suddenly under investigation or the mayor decided to make a power play and teach her a lesson by firing him... or worse.

Naturally, Valerie also found that she couldn't think of of Vlad and the jumbled mess her life had become without her thoughts drifting to another figure; Danny Phantom. She found herself conflicted when it came to imagining how to deal with him, because while she very much wanted to shoot him -or at the very least slap him several times- she was also full of questions for him. They'd been through a lot together in the year since he'd first appeared, with Phantom bouncing from from annoyance to outright enemy every other week and Valerie learning more and more about ghosts and how they operate with each encounter. They'd fought through Skulker's jungle by working together in hopes of saving a flour sack but then they had a major falling out when Technus tried to take control of a local satellite and only ended up further complicating Valerie's life by 'upgrading' her. This had also thrown a wrench into her dating life when she decided to break off her relationship with Danny Fenton to keep him safe, but that was just as much for his sake as well as hers. Things had been tense with both Fenton and Phantom ever since then, and Val's discovery of half ghosts hadn't made their issues any better. In fact, for the last couple of months she had pretty much been avoiding them all together, and since Danielle had vanished after the Plasmius incident, she had to deal with all her questions and emotions by herself... and the pressure was beginning to get to her.

Lost in recollection, Valerie found herself so wound up that by the time the bell rang, she had to make a conscious effort not to shoot it off the wall. "Alright children," Lancer yelled, grasping for the last strings of their attention before they fled his jurisdiction, "don't forget you have another test tomorrow. I say this because I know as teenagers you're prone to certain lapses in judgement, especially you few...troubled... studiers." As she collected her things, Val couldn't help but notice him look at the empty section where Danny was supposed to be and shake his head with disapproval.

"Two towers and a ring, Mr. Fenton, what am I going to do with you?"

She could sympathize with Lancer's frustrations at his absence, after all, Danny had been the one person Valerie used to connect with better than anyone after they'd begun hanging out, but recent events had clouded her good memories of their time together and replaced them with hurricane of questions and -not entirely baseless- accusations. Perhaps that was why when she found the chicken-scratch note summoning her to the outskirts of town for a fight, rather than panicking and being defensive like she would have been months ago, she simply smiled at the invitation. Valerie wanted answers and it's not like she had much to do the rest of the day considering her free period. Besides, she thought, suddenly grateful she only had think of donning her suit for it to materialize as she headed for the exit and prepared to hit the open sky, maybe it's time to bury the hatchet.


	2. No Man's Land

Valerie had hated No Man’s Land ever since she was a little girl, but now, seeing it abandoned and decrepit only strengthened her hatred of the place. Tearing through the rusted fencing, she thought back to when it first closed down a few years ago and how bummed everyone was to be losing one of the few “vintage” hang out spots in Amity Park that wasn’t the Nasty Burger.

Well, she thought with a smirk, almost everyone.

She had always taken a small pleasure in being the one to tell the others that the old theme park was finally getting closed after Floody Waters opened nearby, partially because she wouldn’t have to just stand around the rides looking aloof with the other popular kids anymore and partially because the place had just always felt… off to her. Sure, there were the usual rumors that every town had about theme parks; missing kids, haunted attractions, possessed rides, Valerie had heard it all about this place, and in any other town it would’ve been a lot easier to just chalk them up as superstition. 

“But this is Amity Park,” she said, cautious of her surroundings, “so I’d bet if there was something trying to kill us here it would actually be a ghost.”

As if on cue, a sound rang out over the intercoms, filling the silence with a maniacal laugh. “Welcome, Girl,” the ghost called out, his voice deep and threatening, “I see you’ve taken me up on my invitation after all! I have to admit I was afraid you wouldn’t be up for this particular challenge but consider me impressed!”

“Shove it, Tin Man,” she barked, angrily eying the exhibits as she reached the true entrance to the park, “you know why I’m here.”

Val tensed as the giant monitor buzzed to life and began projecting Skulker’s giant mechanical face over her. “By now,” he bellowed, adjusting the camera so that he was fully in frame, “surely you must have guessed by now that the prize is, of course, our mutual prey.”

Stepping aside, Skulker revealed a massive cage that was hiding behind him, the contents of which on worsened Valerie’s mood. Inside the cage, handcuffed and gagged, there sat Danny Phantom, glaring between the hunter who had caged him and the huntress who was intensely staring him down as he bounced from side to side in an attempt to free himself. Watching as he struggled against his restraints, Valerie calmed herself down and thought things through before she blew a hole in the display monitor.

“So you caught the ghost boy,” she said, dismissively waving her hand and feigning general disinterest, “big whoop. Just means that there’s no competition taking you down this time.”

“Ah, but that’s my point!” Skulker began, banging his fist on the cage in excitement, “You see, last time I underestimated you two, allowing you to use, ugh, teamwork instead of challenging you as one hunter to another.”

“Get to the point, metal mouth!”

“Hmph, fine, whelp; the rules of the game are simple, just like the last time I captured you, you’re going to be hunted you, but this time, rather than be a player, I am simply a spectator. If you can make your way through this ‘No Man’s Land’ in one piece and collect the key to the cage, then you may claim your prize.”

“And if I just turn around and walk out of this dump?”

“Then my wall gets a new skull and my floor gets a new pelt, it’s simple really. Oh, and by the way,” he said, turning the display off as the attractions in the park hummed to life, “you’re on the clock: you have two hours.”

——

Two hours should be more than enough time for her, Valerie thought, zooming through the park and making her way to the broadcast area. As she tore through the litter filled streets, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d have been doing this even a few months ago. Ever since she had helped Phantom rescue his “cousin” from Vlad Plasmius –and discovered that he was the alias of her benefactor Vlad Masters- Valerie had been struggling with the question of whether or not she had been doing the right thing in the year that she’d been hunting ghosts.

You can’t think of ghosts as, well, “ghosts” per say, Vlad’s voice echoed in her head, they’re more like… monsters, sure some of them can act human but at the end of the day they’re just invading our world and wreaking havoc because they’re all destructive by nature. 

And she’d believed that creep too, despite everything she’d seen, she believed him! Now, here she was, once again stuck being played by one of these “mindless creatures” like a chess piece. Unfortunately for Valerie, she was so busy focusing on the past, that she failed to notice the rapidly approaching sound of barking before it was too late. Suddenly finding herself knocked to the side, Val instinctively retracted her hoverboard before hitting the ground and rolling into the side of shooting gallery.

Despite the suit absorbing most of the impact, Valerie still found herself dazed as she tried to stand and fight. Once she regained her composure and took note of the situation, she cursed at herself for not being more careful. “Of course,” she growled, drawing her gun from its side holster, “it haaaddd to be ghost dogs.”

Fanned out around her were four large hunting dogs, each one deformed or mutated in some way and glowing with the same ghostly energy that usually accompanied things that were trying to kill her. The largest of them was obviously the one that had attacked her, and if it weren’t for the fact that it was missing half of the skin on its face and baring its teeth at her, then Valerie might have thought it was just an accident. However, the way the pack began circling her against the old wooden panel suggested otherwise.. Thinking about it, she couldn’t help but laugh. After all, it was Phantom’s stupid ghost dog that started her on this whole ‘ghost hunter’ kick. 

Before she could make her move, two of the smaller ghosts lunged at her, each one snapping ethereal fangs at her arms. Unfortunately for her, the suit could only do so much to stop their attack, having already been burned out from the sneak attack and general use throughout the day, which meant she was now only about seventy-five percent as protected as before. Throwing off her assailants and ducking behind the wall to compose herself, Valerie took a deep breath before she began shooting through the wood paneling, aiming for the tinges of energy her the overhead display in her suit was showing as targets. A few quick yelps followed by the absence of noise were the only signs she had to peek out from behind the booth, watching as her assailants disappeared as quickly as they’d shown up.

“Is that all you got,” she yelled, more adrenaline than logic behind her taunt, “I thought this was supposed to be a challenge?!”

Composing herself, Valerie continued her journey towards the broadcast station in the center of No Man’s Land, slowing down just enough to be on the lookout for more enemies and other traps. Just as she was about drop her guard, a flash of movement drew her eye to broken down tunnel of love ride. Looking around, she couldn’t see anything overtly dangerous or out of place except crudely drawn X’s over the heart decals on the banner. 

“It’s a straight shot over this tunnel to the middle of the park,” she rationalized, looking into the darkness and hovering above the stagnant rainwater that had been collecting in the tube, “except if I were a gambling girl, I’d bet that the stupid key is in the tunnel … along with something big and ugly no doubt.”

Responding to her concern almost immediately, the tunnel shook with the sound of an awful screech. “Because of course there is.” 

Sighing, Valerie turned the lights of her suit up to illuminate the cavern as she drifted inside. Once again speeding up in an effort to be done with the day, she was almost halfway through when a tripwire sent her rolling through the muck. 

“That’s twice now that you’ve ended up in the dirt,” Skulker’s voice echoed through the attraction, the smug tinge of satisfaction meshing with the static of ancient wiring, “perhaps I overestimated your skills after all. Nevertheless, you’re surprisingly close to your goal, a feat even I have to give credit for, I mean, you didn’t even waste time searching the rest of the outer areas. Very well then, if you wish to be done so badly…. be my guest.”

Just as Skulker finished speaking, Valerie heard another ear piercing screech as a giant pair of spindly, ghoulish legs worked their way into the tunnel, tearing through the cheesy valentines decorations on either side and dragging a gargantuan cyclopean spider body behind them. As if the image in front of her wasn’t horrible enough, Val watched as the ghost’s eye began to split down the center, revealing a huge vertical mouth lined with teeth.

“Ew,” she began, shakily rising to her feet and backing up to give her room to act, “that is just all sorts of nasty.”

Regular spiders were bad enough to Valerie, and she still wasn’t too keen on ghosts either, but this… this in front of her was a whole new kind of hell altogether. So, once she had put enough distance her and the misshapen spirit, she wasted no time in keying up one of the few weapons she rarely had a need for; a spectral grenade, which in most cases would be absolute overkill, but here it seemed like a no brainer. She did not want to move in close on that thing. 

Clicking the detonator, Valerie slung the egg shaped explosive under the approaching danger and waited for the three second delay to be over. Closing her eyes and focusing all her energy on protecting herself, she counted down under her breath until the thunderous explosion pushed her back thanks to the shield she’d constructed absorbing the damage without completely stopping it’s actual force. Looking out at the giant puddles of ectoplasm all around her, Valerie sighed as she trudged through the remainder of the tunnel.

“Oh come now,” Skulker called as Valerie waved her middle fingers at the security camera he was using to monitor her, the surprise evident in his voice “I was expecting more of a show.”

“Just give me a few minutes,” Valerie mumbled, ignoring the fact that the he couldn’t hear her as the exhaustion started to take its toll and she exited the attraction, “and I’ll show you something really impressive.”

——

As she approached the main office of the park, Valerie noticed a large silhouette towering in front of the entrance. Squinting hard to focus, she was annoyed –but not surprised- to see that instead of another cardboard cutout of the ridiculous mascot, it was Skulker who was guarding the post and waiting for her to arrive.

“Congratulations,” he said, slowly clapping as Valerie came closer, “you’ve arrived with an hour to spare and barely any serious injuries, well done.”  
Scowling at the towering mech suit, Valerie wasted no time bantering before drawing her gun and shooting a hole through the center of the armor. Watching calmly as he fell onto his back, she squatted down beside him and tapped the barrel of her blaster against the side of his head, a cold smile decorating her face while she took in the surprise on his. 

“Y’know, if you’re going to play these kinds of game with someone,” she said, reaching into one of the pockets of the suit to remove the key she’d dug out spider goop, “you really shouldn’t stand around to gloat.”

“Perhaps,” he growled, “you should take your own advice!”

Watching calmly as he attempted to move any part of his suit to attack her, Valerie’s smile grew wider as panic and confusion worked their way into Skulker’s robotic eyes.

“Uh-oh,” she taunted, calmly kicking off the head of the suit and plucking the tiny ghost from inside the robotic shell, “someone’s having technical difficulties isn’t he? Well, you can just thank the ‘DALV’ corporation for the latest in short circuiting technology.”

“You insolent little brat, I am the ghost zone’s greatest hunter and I will not suffer this indignity!”

“I mean, you’re kinda low on options at the moment so, yeah, I’m thinking you will.”

Snarling, Skulker began swinging wildly on his captor. “Coward! Is this how you would claim your prize?! Where’s your fighting spirit!”

“Work smarter not harder,” Valerie responded as she pulled a containment cube from her belt to hold him, “that’s lesson number one in a no man’s land, pipsqueak.”

——

Once inside the building, Val found her prize sitting in the back of the surveillance room in a large iron cage. Seeing that his suit was in tatters and his face had a light green tint that she suspected would be pink if he had blood, Valerie figured that he’d apparently been struggling for a while before giving up and slumping against the center of the cage with his head down. Knocking on the door before entering the room, Valerie instinctively froze when he looked up at her with his nuclear green eyes despite having the clear advantage in terms of mobility, something any good hunter knows the value of… but she wasn’t here for a hunt.

“So,” she said, leveling her gun at the cage as both of them stared each other down, “you wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?”

“Depends,” he said, going defensively into sarcasm, “which way gets me out of the cage without getting shot at… or torn apart… or… y'know just avoiding pain in general sounds good.”

Sighing as she slumped against the door frame to sit, Valerie kept the gun even with Danny’s prison. “Phantom, in the last few hours I’ve been mauled by wolves, covered in spider guts, clotheslined by booby-traps and dropped in a gutter…”

“And here i was in my cage just having the best time banging my head against the bars for giggles.”

“So,” she continued, taking off her helmet and letting her dark hair flow over her shoulders as she closed her eyes, “unless you really want me to shoot you right now, I suggest you stop talking for a bit.”

Danny lasted exactly ten seconds in silence.

“…So you didn’t come here to shoot me?”

“Do you want me to shoot you, Danny?”

The sound of her saying his real name so casually was enough to cause his eyes to go wide so quickly she had to check to make sure her gun hadn’t accidentally gone off. Thankfully, this revelation also sent him back into silence so that Valerie could compose herself. 

“Pop quiz; Danny Phantom got himself locked in a cage he cant just walk through, how’s not important but the point is he’s in a jam,” she said, waving the gun around the room demonstratively, “but to get free, all he has to do is just be honest with me, again. Can he do it? Or will he spend the night in a creepy abandoned amusement park like a stupid jerk?”

Looking around, Danny seemed to consider his options in the room for a while before finally staring down Valerie again, the uncertainty of the situation making his eyes shine even brighter. “I… I don’t know what you-”

“I know about Mayor Masters too, by the way,” she said, her relaxed position betraying the building tension, “Vlad Masters is Vlad Plasmius, saw it with my own eyes. You, though… I spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about you-”

“Scandalous”

“-tracking sightings, trying to figure out why you suddenly just showed up out of nowhere and why you were always starting a fight with other ghosts when they seemed to never really cross territories with each other. Y'know at first, i thought you were just some crazy dead kid trying to take control of the town, then- after our little adventure in babysitting- a lot of things started falling into place: 'hey, half ghosts, that’s apparently a thing’ and 'Phantom does care about humans, he has that dumb little hopefulness I’ve seen somewhere’ and of course 'Danny Phantom hangs shows up around Foley and Manson a lot,.. he also uses Fenton Tech a lot… but there’s no way he’d be that obvious…there’s just no way.’ Do I need to go on or are we on the same level now?”

Relaxing a little, Danny gave a small sad smile and threw up his hands in defeat. “I mean, I’m in a cage and you have a gun and the key to previously mentioned cage… i think you still have the upper hand here, Val.”

He was right of course, it would’ve been so easy for her to let loose on him in his captive state. She could yell at him, scream how he made her feel like an idiot, throw all sorts of weaponry through the bars to inflict some minor damage on him… but that was all just the rage thinking, and she was better than that now. 

Sure, six months ago she would’ve jumped at the chance to take on her frustration on Danny Phantom, but now, she was tired; tired of being angry, tired of ghosts popping up every five minutes, Valerie was just tired of being tired at this point.

“Can you change back?”

Another surprising question to catch him off guard, half sincere and half designed to flaunt her advantage.

“I’m honestly struggling not to,” he said, his eyes flashing blue before rebounding back to green, “but-”

“But you still don’t trust me?”

He flinched again before sighing and reverting back to his human form in a flash of white light. “Don’t say it like that”

She was watching him more closely now, causing him to squirm a bit in his cell. Unsure of what to do next, Danny yelped and started fumbling around his pockets when he heard the “Space Ghost” theme blaring from his phone, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was sitting on a control panel just out of his reach. Calmly walking over to where his phone was jostling across the counter, Valerie tossed it through the bars to and then flopped down beside his prison while he tried to answer.

“He-hello?… Yeah Tuck I’m fine…no no, i’m good I promise, I’m just,” as he locked eyes with Valerie, she shrugged, “uh, hanging out with Valerie?”

There was such an explosion of chatter from the other side as Tucker, Sam and Jazz each fought to chide him -about how worried they’d been and how he shouldn’t disappear and how he should be careful- that Val couldn’t help but laugh at the situation, earning a sympathetic smile from Danny despite his predicament.

“Yeah, yeah I’m still here, that was her laughing. Sorry about that, but look I’m fine, we’re just…” he struggled to find the words for exactly what they were doing other that hanging out, “catching up. Anyway I’ll see you guys in a few.”

Hanging up before they could get another chance to yell at him, Danny gave a sigh of relief.

“I notice you didn’t mention the cage,” she said finally moving to unlock it and release him.

“I figured it wasn’t a good conversation topic,” Danny said, watching as she pulled the gate open, “besides, it’s not so bad in here, great view of the creepy security monitors and only delivers a mild shock when you hit the bars too hard, usually you pay extra for that.”

Helping him up once he’d crawled out, Valerie smiled at him before she swiftly dropped him back onto the floor.

“Okay, fair enough,” he said, rolling back onto his side, “I guess I deserved that.”

“Oh most definitely,” she responded, helping him up once again, “but now that that’s out of my system, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Looking around the decrepit hub, Danny nodded and lead the way out. “By the way Val,” he said once they had walked halfway across the park in silence, ignoring the occasional growl or creak that came from inside the attractions, “I don’t think I ever thanked you for saving me, so, uh… y'know, thank you for saving me… and also not shooting me.”

“Mhmm,” she grunted, “don’t count your chickens just yet, Fenton, we’ve got a lot to talk about before i make the long term decision not to shoot you, but for right now let’s just put this death trap far behind us.”

“I guess this isn’t just gonna be one of those of 'walk into the sunset and all is forgiven’ situations, is it?”

“Danny, I will throw your skinny butt into that dunk tank,” she said, hooking her thumb towards a booth where something impossibly large seemed to still be thrashing around the fetid water, “and with as long as this day’s been, that much effort will only make me more upset with you.”

“Alright, alright, geez,” he said, once again throwing his hands up to signal her victory, “at least when you were hunting me I couldn’t take it personally.”

“Okay then,” she began, making a finger gun as they reached the front gate and turned to face each other, putting it to his temple before pushing his head to signal that she’d fired on him, “for old times sake; bang, baby.”


	3. Thermodynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuing a few days after No Man's Land, Danny agrees to give Valerie the information she's been missing for the last year. Of course that means he's putting himself right in her line of fire but it's the least he could do all things considered.

Danny could have easily just flown to Elmerton to see Valerie, but given the gravity of the upcoming conversation, he was relieved when Tucker offered to drive him there in his new ride. Hopping into the clean black chevy, Danny let out an anxious breath and nodded to Tucker that he was ready to go.

“Am I taking sir to his execution,” he said, putting on his worst british accent as he shifted into first and started towards the town line, “you look terrible, man.”

“Thanks dude that’s really what I needed right now.”

“I’m just sayin, I’ve seen you less shaken after getting sideswiped by a dragon, you sure this is a good idea?”

“No,” Danny began, his mind racing with possibilities, “but she figured it out, Tuck. I mean, yeah she was cool about it in the moment but now she wants to talk and I just… I don’t know what to say to her.”

“Just do what you did with Jazz-”

Beaming, Danny slapped his knee like an old cartoon prospector. “Have clockwork send me back in time to fix my mistakes and catch her off guard with the fact that I know that she knows, it could work, man, I could do it!”

“Wow ok no, I meant just talk to her, you weirdo,” Tucker said, hooking a left that sent Danny flying against the window, “you guys dated just pretend like she never broke up and now you’re at least somewhat normal.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“... I’ll put some nice flowers on your grave.”

Throwing his face into his hands, Danny screamed. “Why don’t we just keep driving? I’ve got gas money, we could do it, Tuck, just you, me and the open road, a good ol’ fashioned road trip! Leave our worries behind us, live off the land, yeah?”

“You had me up until ‘live off the land,’ TF don’t do foraging, Fenton.”

Smiling at the normalcy of a hypothetical road trip, Danny watched as they passed over the bridge that lead  into Elmerton, drawing him closer to his meeting with Valerie. In an effort to give the town some sort of levity in spite of its...questionable reputation, the city council had a habit of changing the welcome sign from week to week, this week it read; _Elmerton! We Don’t Know How To Quit!_

While he assumed it was probably meant to be inspiring, he couldn't help but see it as vaguely threatening to outsiders.

“So, really,” Tucker said, eyes glued to the road “on a scale of one to ten how badly do you think this could possibly go?”

“Which is the one where she kicks me in the head and possibly breaks my arn?”

“Hmm, an eight huh?”

“THAT'S ONLY AN EIGHT?!”

Stopping the car in front of Valerie's building, Tucker smiled as he unlocked the door and saw Danny off. “You kids have fun! See you in a few hours.”

“You're the actual devil, Tucker,” he yelled back, shoving his hands into his pockets before turning to press the buzzer, “you're the devil and I am-

In hell

That was Danny's only thought as he stepped into the sweltering heat of Valerie's apartment. He'd been expecting a slight temperature jump from the outside, but the difference between the chill of winter and the indoor sauna he had unknowingly entered was almost more than he could handle.

“Uh, hi” he said, offering her an awkward wave as she ushered him in.

“Hey… so you expecting a firing squad or something?”

“No, no it's just I've never done… this… before, I'm not really sure what to do.”

“You could start by unclenching your fists,” Valerie said, “you look like there's a sniper targeting you.”

“Well not yet, but it's still early give it time”

Visibly relaxing as Valerie gave him a half smile,  Danny awkwardly followed her into her room where she flopped comfortably onto the bed, leaving him standing in the door. Looking around like a deer lost in the woods, he found himself taking stock of the assorted ghost information decorating her walls and waiting for her to begin the conversation for him, the blasting heat of the apartment compounding on his already tense psyche.

“So…”

“So…”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

And there it was, Danny thought, the beginning of the end. No turning back now.

“I mean in my defense, we had evidence that you were pretty anti-ghost… it just… it never felt like the right time.”

Shrugging, Valerie picked up a half assembled ectogun and began playing with the innards, her face a neutral mask.

“We were friends, Danny,” she said, not looking up at him from her work, “after the ghost king after Skulker, after Technus...why didn't you just talk to me? I mean yeah I wasn't Danny Phantom’s biggest fan but I really liked Danny Fenton, more than enough to hear him out at least.”

Danny's paranoia made sure to take stock of the way she used like in the past tense.

Racking his brain for the correct response, his mouth and his brain experienced a severe disconnect which resulted in him going, “Aren't you hot? It's like ninety in here?”

Staring at him incredulously, Valerie rolled her eyes and gave a small laugh. “After November my dad always turns up the heat like crazy, he can't stand being cold for more than a few minutes, but like I was saying-”

“Right, I'm sorry but...jeez it's like an oven in here, I'm not trying to change the subject though I promise.”

“I'd probably help if you took off your jacket then.”

Quickly following her suggestion, Danny stripped his jacket off and folded it over the back of her desk chair before feeling immediately exposed having removed a layer.

“Better?”

“Totally,” he lied, now more sure than ever that the heat was more in his head than in the room, “and... I'm sorry, again. I know I've said that a lot in the last few days but I mean it, I really do. I was going to tell you, I swear I was but then with the breakup and all the stuff with Vlad and school I just… I pushed you out.”

Arching her eyebrow at him, Valerie waited for him to continue.

“It's like... in my head I knew, 'hey, maybe talk to Val, see how she's handling all this too’ but then some new stupid thing would happen and I'd get wrapped up stopping it.” Danny paused to swing his legs around the chair holding his jacket before continuing. “Tucker tells me I gotta give myself time to breathe but I just… it's like… y’know?!”

Saying nothing, Valerie put the gun aside and met his eyes across the room, urging him to continue, because while she did in fact “know” the feeling he was describing, she felt like it was important for him to finish.

“I think I didn't tell you because I was being selfish. Sure, I wanted to tell you, I heard you say you would give up ghost hunting for me and I was sure I could tell you then; like 'hey Val, before you do all that, I'm a ghost, not just a ghost but the ghost you hate the most, hope we can still be cool.’ But I didn't, did I? Because we were normal, and that's what I wanted. You didn't see me as Fenton the freak or Danny Phantom the menace when we were together… I was just Danny and you were just Valerie, that's how you thought it was right?”

“Sometimes,” she said, shoving her work into a box and pushing it under the bed, “it was fun though, even if your friends did hate me.”

“They didn't hate you,” Danny said, giving a lazy smile and mussing his hair, “Sam's naturally distrustful and Tucker’s just a really good friend so he's protective of me.”

“Oh I know,” Valerie said, giving him a smile that was mostly sad, “he told me that when he cancelled on me the first time, said he was doing you a favor and that you'd owe him until you both died… then he laughed.”

In a burst of clarity, Danny remembered the incident in question, cringing as he thought back to possessing Tucker and forcing him to bring Sam to the dance freshman year while he dealt with Paulina.

Watching him carefully, Valerie broke the silence. “I'm guessing there's more to that story too?”

Groaning, he planted his head in his hands and nodded.

“Okay, and the ghost dog? Any more about that I should know?”

Suddenly getting very serious, Danny lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes. “Good news there at least, Cujo’s gone, maybe for good, we haven't seen him since that night at Axion Labs. He just kinda...faded away after he got his ball.”

There was a bittersweet tone to his words. “You miss em?”

“He was a good dog, just put a in a bad place, still, sorry he kinda…”

“Ruined my life?”

Nodding, Danny let the silence wash over them again as they both thought of what to say next.

“It’s- I'm not gonna lie and say it's fine, but I’m dealing with it, besides you still haven't told me what happened to YOU. Were you born like this or did someone...do this to you? Was it Vlad? People don't just wake up half ghost as far as I know, but then again there’s apparently a lot I’m out of the loop on.”

Taking a deep breath, Danny transformed, exhaling just as the last bits of color drained from his hair and his eyes shifted from blue to green.

“Believe it or not Vlad had nothing to do with this,” he said, gesturing to his deathly white face, “my parents, when they first finished our ghost portal, the blueprints got mixed up and they put the ‘on’ switch inside the thing, and so they gave up on getting it working for a while. Well, cut to a few weeks later, Tucker, Sam and I were fooling around in the basement and she goes, 'hey, why don't you go inside the portal, you know, look around.’”

“Look around the experimental project designed to punch a hole in reality,” Valerie cut in, “that was your bright idea?”

“Anyway, I slapped on this jumpsuit and stepped inside… next thing I knew there was a great big flash and it felt like someone had strapped me to a lightning rod, when I woke up I looked like this and I could do… a lot more than Danny Fenton ever did.”

“So… you died then?”

“Sort of,” he responded, tapping his foot in anticipation, “I got better.”

“And your parents?”

“They… I'm working my way up to that. My folks love me and I know they'd accept me no matter what, but this is a lot to take in. Jazz says it'd be easier to just be honest with them 'in a controlled setting’ but if I had any sense of control over my life I wouldn't be getting two hours of sleep a day… you're taking all of this way better than I expected by the way.”

“I'm still too sore from the other day to use any energy on you, I got a job to keep remember?”

Looking her over, Danny noticed the faint brown lines decorating her arms and legs, thin dips in her skin that were telltale marks of a hardfought few months.

“Hey, eyes up here, dude.”

Suddenly aware that he’d been staring at her without saying anything, he felt his face warm up with embarrassment and quickly averted his eyes to look at almost anything else in the room. “Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t being creepy I promise,” he began, his cheeks still light green with blush, “I was just looking at your scars! Not your… your uh… anyway yeah that’s about everything! I got powers from the ghost portal and I’ve been like this ever since. Dani’s my clone-sister-cousin-ish and she can do almost anything I can do and Vlad’s like me except carrying twenty years of crazy and a Lugosi fashion sense, he also wants my to bang my mom so there’s that.”

“It’s...weird that you know about that last part,” she said, offering him a small, genuinely warm smile once he finally brought his eyes back to her direction, “but I guess if you’re gonna have bad blood with a guy might as well go all out.”

“The guy wasn’t exactly subtle about it, Valerie.”

Shrugging, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, going silent for so long that for a minute Danny thought she had fallen asleep and was filled with dread about what to do next if she had.

“Uh, Val?”

“Shhh…”

Okay she wasn’t sleeping, but that just made her silence even more nerve wracking for him. After awhile, he realized that he was inadvertently dropping the temperature of her room in his anticipation, so he reverted back to human while the heat crept back in the room to fill the space where words had gone unused. _This is torture,_ Danny thought, trapped by the confines of his own guilt and politeness to wait for her to say anything to move this session along.

“Okay.”

Hearing that word was like being electrocuted all over again for him. “Okay?”

“Okay, I can see why you wouldn’t exactly tell me everything on a first date, and I’m not going to throw you out the window so you can relax.”

“How did you-”

“It was Tucker’s one request, he’s really into keeping things non violent and chucking you out a seventh story window would cause a scene. And I’m not as mad as I thought I would be, you thought you were doing the right thing by keeping me in the dark and again, this is… a lot, thinking back to everything that’s happened around town in the last two years.”

Before Danny could open his mouth, Valerie held up a solitary finger, cutting him off.

“ _But-”_

Oh no…

“I don’t like being lied to, Danny. And like you said, you were being selfish by keeping things to yourself.  I cared about you, I was going to give up ghost hunting and try to be normal with you, stop being angry and just let something good play out after a shitty year took everything from me, but instead of sitting me down and talking to me you let me go… you let me keep on exhausting myself, thinking I was alone, when you _knew,_ you knew how much I hated doing this, you knew how much my dad was scared for me after you outed me during that invasion. Yes, I ended things and no, I’m not blaming you for me being angry, that’s on me, I told you my dad says I got it from my mom when we were hanging out but… but you knew how much I was struggling to just hold on to something.”

The room was suffocating now, with the heat seeming to increase exponentially as they sat staring at each other. In a moment of clarity, Danny realized that Valerie was the one causing the heat, and as he focused he could see red lines forming a circuit pattern crossing her forearms. _The suit,_ he thought, remembering the whirring heat of his laptop after running too many programs at once, _she’s been trying to stay calm for me but the suit is overcompensating for her anger and turning it into actual heat._

“You stopped talking to me at school, you almost never noticed that I was gone, it’s like you shut me out and that _hurt_ danny. Then I find out about Danielle and the mayor and everything I thought I had was gone, I couldn’t get my dad involved, he doesn’t deserve that knife at his throat with all the pressure he’s already under trying to keep us above water, but I guess you knew that too. So it was just me. Again. With a bunch of pieces to sort out for a puzzle I didn’t know I was supposed to be putting together. You said it yourself, you have Tucker, you have Sam, you have your sisters, you even said yourself that you know if it really came down to it you’d have your parents too. Me? My ‘friends’ mostly ditched me after we lost everything and Star has her own issues to deal with, my ‘boss’ turned out to be a manipulative creep using me to settle a grudge, and my dad is so close to getting his life back to something resembling normal that, to be honest, I’d have to be a real bitch to drop all this on him now, especially after how I treated him before…”

She stopped just long enough for Danny to see that she was almost crying, her stubborn determination the only thing seeming to hold back the tears, but her next sentence was such a damnation that he wished she’d have just shot him.

“You didn’t even try.” She said in a soft voice, seemingly defeated. “I meant it when I said we should stay friends but… friends talk to each other, friends do more that stand in the background keeping secrets  from each other. Friends try, Danny, but what did you do? You just-”

A sad smile appeared on her face, one matched only by Danny’s as he knew they’d reached the same word for their mutual disappearance from each other’s lives.

“You _ghosted_ me, and I let it happen.”

Before his brain could stop the words his mouth was forming, Danny spoke. “I hear three dates is usually when that happens.”

Much to his surprise, she laughed at that. A genuine warm laughter that weakened her enough to let a few tears slip out and made him simultaneously feel better and worse about how they had left things.

“Seriously though, you’re right… and I am sorry this is the way you had to hear things but if it makes you feel better, it wasn’t you, it was me. And no I’m not being cliche, I’m serious. After everything with Technus and Vlad and just, _everything,_ the only take away was that it was too easy to hurt you. Don’t get me wrong I have no doubt that you could- and would- kick my ass six ways to Sunday in a fair fight but…”

Standing for the first time, Danny crossed the room and joined Valerie on the edge of the bed. “Wrecking your suit, being hunted like rabbits through the ghost zone, accidentally shooting you when we were in space, that look on your face when Dani was destabilizing and you thought you’d turned into a killer, every time I thought about getting close to you there was another reminder thrown in my face that at the end of the day, it seemed like I was made to haunt you, you know? And if I could just push you far enough out of my circle of weirdness after we split, maybe things could go back to normal for you.”

“You tried that with Tucker and Sam? Or Jazz”

“I’m pretty sure those two will be stuck with me until the day they die, I accepted this years ago. And Jazz is just...Jazz. To her I’m the same annoying little brother I’ve always been, only now I can walk through walls and don’t scream when I see the teletubbies.”

Accepting his company as the temperature started dropping again, she smiled. “So don’t try to force your normal on me then. We’re both going through a lot, and I don’t think anyone else can understand how uniquely terrible things are for us. You don’t have to be my best friend and start telling me your deepest darkest fears all of a sudden, just… don’t shut me out again alright? Otherwise I’ll hire a Dipsy impersonator to stand outside your window until you stop being dumb.”

“...I hate that yellow bastard.”

“That’s Lala, Dipsy’s the green one.”

“Bastards a bastard, Val.”

Sitting together, Danny found himself grateful they had entered a comfortable silence for the first time since he had arrived. Of course he knew she still had some issues she would want to discuss later, but for now it was good that they’d gotten as far as they had today, even if if was mostly just clearing up old air. Adjusting himself as Valerie leaned her head on his shoulder, he tried to regulate the heat she was still putting off by subtly dropping his own body temperature to slightly above what he considered a death chill.

“Danny,” Valerie began, her anger and fatigue finally polymerizing into full fledged exhaustion as the previous day caught up with her.

“Yeah Val?”

“I liked Dipsy as a kid.”

Fully asleep now, she dropped slightly off his shoulder and found herself on the edge of her bed, leaving Danny alone with nothing but his thoughts, the sound of the heater kicking on, and the pounding of the rain as company. Slowly standing up to avoid making any noise, he looked at her with a small smile and turned to go, positive that Damon Gray would be less than enthusiastic about a teenage boy loitering in his daughter’s room while he was at work and especially while she was asleep. “Yeah, well,” he said, locking the deadbolt for her before stepping through the door as a specter, “you liked me too… you might just have bad taste.”


End file.
